Can the GOP bring more Latinos to the party?

Booming population can’t be ignored, but Republicans differ on how to reach out to Hispanic voters

Hailey Bunsold, 9, gives a high-five to State Senator Juan Vargas, right after they led a crowd in chanting "Si Bob Puede!" during a rally for Bob Filner, at left, who stood with his fiance Bronwyn Ingram at the podium.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Hailey Bunsold, 9, gives a high-five to State Senator Juan Vargas, right after they led a crowd in chanting "Si Bob Puede!" during a rally for Bob Filner, at left, who stood with his fiance Bronwyn Ingram at the podium.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Latino Stats

Latino Population
Latinos make up about one-third of San Diego County’s 3.1 million residents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the San Diego Association of Governments. The region’s current Latino population of 1,035,226 is forecast to rise nearly 16 percent by the year 2020.

Latinos constitute about 38 percent of California’s population, compared with about 32 percent in 2000.

The national figure is approximately 17 percent — up from nearly 13 percent a decade earlier.

Latino voters

Latinos currently account for 18 percent of registered voters in San Diego County.

The statewide figure was about 22 percent in 2010.

Latinos made up 8 percent of registered voters in the United States in 2010.

In this month’s presidential election, exit polls showed that Latinos constituted 10 percent of the nationwide vote — up from 7 percent in 2008.

Election findings

On Nov. 5, the research groups ImpreMedia and Latino Decisions polled 5,600 Latino registered voters nationwide who said they had cast their ballots or would do so the next day. Here are some results of the survey:

Most important issues (respondents could choose more than one):

Economy: 53 percent

Immigration: 35 percent

Education: 20 percent

Health care: 14 percent

Know an unauthorized immigrant(s): 60 percent

Reasons for voting:

Support Democrats: 39 percent

Support Latinos: 36 percent

Support Republicans: 15 percent

The “caring” question:

Barack Obama “truly cares about Latinos:” 66 percent

Mitt Romney “truly cares about Latinos:" 14 percent

Elizabeth Aguilera & Mark Walker • U-T

San Diego County might just be the best example of the nation’s growing Latino clout, which this month helped deny victories to Republican conservatives such as presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Rep. Brian Bilbray and mayoral contender Carl DeMaio.

From Washington, D.C., to Oceanside to San Ysidro, Republicans are asking themselves what happened and what to do next.

On the airwaves, online and in newspaper pages, they agree that Latinos are a booming population that cannot be ignored. But they disagree on how best to court those voters without sacrificing core Republican principles. They ask: Can the GOP maintain its traditional values while embracing comprehensive immigration reform and aggressively courting minorities?

The nation’s shifting demographics underpin this debate, and San Diego County is a prime illustration of those dynamics. Latinos make up one-third of the region’s population — a record high — and constitute a plurality in more local cities than ever. Many of them are young adults primed to become voters and workers.

“There needs to be a focus on issues of importance to Latinos — and to all Americans — including job creation, improving education and support for small business,” said Ruben Barrales, a Republican and outgoing president and CEO of the San Diego County Regional Chamber of Commerce. “The GOP also needs to be a champion for real immigration reform that deals thoughtfully with undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today.”

The Republican Party is dealing with the blowback from being shortsighted and punitive toward Latinos, said Isidro Ortiz, professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at San Diego State University.

“Such activities must be scrapped and replaced with bold, Latino-responsive initiatives,” he said. “On immigration, for example, Republican support for amnesty would advance the nation’s and Latino interests and honor Ronald Reagan’s leadership.”

But while Republicans have to be careful to not alienate Latinos with their immigration rhetoric, they must also understand that Latinos have diverse interests, said Jack Pitney, a political-science professor at Claremont-McKenna College and a former GOP Senate aide.

Latinos’ role in Romney’s defeat is somewhat exaggerated, he said, and quick passage of an immigration bill would not solve the Republican Party’s electoral puzzle.

“The challenge is a lot deeper than that because Hispanics are liberal on a number of policy issues,” Pitney said. “There are no silver bullets.”

Candidates who want to win over Latinos must bridge the immigration divide as well as find common ground with that electorate on the economy, living wages, education parity and access to affordable health care, said Lorena Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer and CEO of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council.

“It all fits together,” she said. “If they see (immigration), as a Band-Aid solution to fix their Latino problem, then that shows a lack of their understanding of the community.”

Some Republicans said the hand-wringing about GOP identity is unnecessary. They stress that their party should improve outreach to a broader range of voters and refine its message, not abandon its core positions.

“Romney’s biggest problem was messaging. In many ways, the Latino community is no different than any other: They want good jobs, good wages and access to affordable health care,” said Joe Kasper, spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine. “Conservatives can do well, presenting solid ideas and solutions, within any community. People need to know what the conservative brand represents, and it wasn’t really all that clear in this last election.”

Brian Jones of Santee, chairman of the Assembly’s Republican caucus, took it a step further in saying that Latinos are “voting against their own interests” when they vote for Democrats.

“They come to America for personal freedom and economic freedom, and that is the core belief of the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party, which does not value personal responsibility and personal success,” he said.

GOP political consultants also have highlighted religious faith — Catholicism and evangelical Christianity — opposition to abortion and other family values as natural ties between their party and Latinos.

For conservative standard-bearer Peter Nunez, though, the differences outweigh the commonalities. The former U.S. attorney in San Diego said Republicans should not even bother courting Latinos.

“The GOP would be wiser to improve its standing with women than to worry about the Latino vote, which is inherently liberal on many issues,” he said. “Democrats are much better at ethnic politics and the politics of grievance. The only way to cater to Latino voters is to abandon principle, forget the rule of law, pretend to be Democrats and adopt the politics of open borders, unlimited immigration and welfare for everyone, which would lose them more votes among other groups than they would gain from Latinos.”

Dismissing Latinos would be foolish, said K.B. Forbes, who served as spokesman for the DeMaio mayoral campaign and has worked with high-profile conservatives such as Pat Buchanan. Forbes is also executive director of Los Angeles-based Consejo de Latinos Unidos — Council of United Latinos — a national advocacy group that educates and represents Latinos on issues of medical insurance overbilling, consumer fraud and police brutality.

He declined to discuss DeMaio’s campaign strategy for Latinos. But in general, he said, too many Republicans have ignored Latinos’ expanding clout at the polls.

“It is not a micro-universe,” said Forbes, who has Chilean-Irish roots and is married to a Mexican. “It is an important part of the population and if Republicans want to remain relevant, then they have to go into those communities and listen and do something. ... Helping and providing service is the way to earn respect and trust and make the connection.”

A major test of the party’s new efforts to connect with Latinos is expected to come into focus next year — if President Barack Obama follows his plan of tackling immigration reform with Congress after addressing the federal budget deficit.

Political analysts said the immigration debate is so thorny because it not only deals with questions of how to treat the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, but also how best to discourage employers from hiring unauthorized workers and how much border security is needed.

A candidate’s stance on immigration has become a prism from which Latinos evaluate that person’s entire platform, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the America’s Voice Education Fund in Washington, D.C., which is pushing for immigration reform. He said it’s a litmus test of sorts for how much a candidate understands Latinos — in the same way African-Americans view civil rights, Jewish voters view Israel and women view abortion.

Sharry and other immigrant advocates said Republicans such as Romney and Bilbray did little to win Latinos in the latest election with their support of “self-deportation” and promises to block the DREAM Act, an ongoing Congressional proposal to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for certain young unauthorized immigrants.

National groups backing Bilbray’s challenger, former San Diego Councilman Scott Peters, ran immigration-themed television ads criticizing the congressman. Those ads featured “DREAM-ers” — people who would qualify under the federal legislation.

An Election Eve poll showed that nearly one in three Latinos said they would be “more likely to vote Republican” if the GOP “took a leadership role in supporting comprehensive immigration reform, with an eventual pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.” The poll, conducted by the research groups ImpreMedia and Latino Decisions, surveyed 5,600 Latinos who already cast their ballots or planned to do so the next day.

It also found that one in five Latinos who supported Obama said they would consider voting Republican if the issue of immigration was resolved.

On immigration or any other issue, displaying genuine caring is a must, said Republican Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, who won election to the Assembly this month.

“There needs to be a conscious effort on how the message is being presented — listen and be respectful,” said Chavez, a retired Marine colonel who spent time growing up in the farm fields where his father worked. “The tenor of what we hear from the fringe elements of the party are not positive for the Latino community.”

Democratic organizers said Republicans would do well to engage in grass roots interaction with Latino communities — show a consistent presence through both special events and day-to-day knocking on doors. They said the goal is to understand Latino cultures, study the immigration issue fully and follow up with positive action.

Integral to that process is fielding Latino candidates whose political positions and personal stories resonate across a wide spectrum of voters. Behind the scenes in recent days, GOP activists in San Diego County have begun a discussion of how to find and cultivate future party leaders from various ethnic and racial groups.

“Politics is cyclical and things change, and I think (Republicans) can recover if they are smart about it, savvy and able to muzzle the voices that are going to be anti-immigrant,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in Washington, D.C.

Obama and Bob Filner, the first Democrat to be elected mayor in San Diego in 20 years, had similar Latino outreach campaigns. They and their backers opened offices in Latino neighborhoods, sent grass roots organizers and neighborhood “ambassadors” to those areas and kept the conversation focused on the need to vote.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the (vote) difference that I was elected by came from the Latino community,” Filner said during a Friday luncheon in downtown San Diego to discuss U.S.-Mexico ties.

Ultimately, candidates would be mistaken to overlook the burgeoning political influence of Latinos or pay lip service to them, said Norma Chavez-Peterson, who led the “Nuestro Voto, Nuestro Futuro” voter-outreach campaign in Escondido from September to Election Day.

“It behooves any elected official who wants to represent the constituency to pay attention,” she said.

Getting more Latinos to join the Republican Party will not be quick or easy, Chavez-Peterson warned.

“It’s insulting that politicians would change their tone and think that we are going to forget that easily,” she said. “There are other things that are going to be questioned — what will they do, what policies will they support, where do they stand on health care and Medicare and Social Security?”